Two contrasting limited-overs matches this week have caused me to rethink and wonder whether, in terms of the entertainment being offered (forget the dosh for a moment, if you can), Twenty20, cricket's zeitgeist, is being hyped beyond its unquestionable worth, and that by contrast 50-overs-per-side ODI cricket is being written off prematurely as a relatively unattractive option.

Last Thursday evening, myself and family packed up a picnic and decamped to Milton Keynes' Campbell Park to watch Northamptonshire play Warwickshire, or Steelbacks v Bears as we must call them. It was pleasant enough weather-wise, and there was a middling if not excessive crowd settling back to enjoy the entertainment.

Inside 10 overs the Steelbacks had succeeded in belying their name by plummeting ineptly to 60-odd for nine, and the game was dead. They were 102 all out and the Bears knocked off the runs jauntily, winning by nine wickets with half a dozen overs to spare. By then, even the cricket-daft member of our brood had long since buggered off to play his own game with a mate. So our bad luck perhaps for choosing that match, but a totally duff game nonetheless and precious little to set the juices racing. You wouldn't go back for a second helping on the back of that.

Then came Saturday's riveting international at Bristol. For a while, as the Black Caps scrabbled to get a grip on things, it looked like being a replica of the midweek domestic non-event. But they rallied, played with purpose, got a workable total, and in turn made England struggle, running out worthy winners. Some commentators, more attuned to biff, bang and wallop apparently, declared this a grinding bore. To me, it was a match of ebb and flow, in helpful bowling conditions for a change, and thoroughly absorbing, I would have thought, for anyone interested in cricket beyond a very superficial level. Certainly it didn't look as if the ground had emptied as Paul Collingwood dug deep to try and haul his side over the line.

Fifty-overs cricket has, of course, had its detractors for a while - not least from this quarter - who have found it increasingly formulaic, with the game going off pop during the power plays, drifting in the middle and then igniting towards the end of an innings. The last World Cup in the Caribbean - an interminable affair - did little favours for the genre and, anyway, by that time Twenty20 had begun to impinge on the consciousness. Here was 50-overs cricket with the boring bit excised.

But what Saturday's match showed vividly was that the longer form of one-day cricket, although by nature restricted compared with Test cricket, still gives allowance for the true fluctuations of a real match, the opportunity for the fightback or a genuine reversal of fortune, things which by its very frenetic nature are generally denied to Twenty20, cricket's equivalent of Pot Black or a one-set tennis shoot-out.

Twenty20 may well be the road to fame and fortune, and good luck with it: the game has undergone upheaval and with it the demographic of those who follow it has widened. That is to the good, and it's about time there were some proper rewards for players. But just remember that the country which is revelling in it most at present, India, would not give the format house-room until the national team managed to win the inaugural world championship in South Africa last year.

The Indian cricket board did not like it specifically because they felt it offered less commercial opportunity when televised, so less income. Straightforward. A rethink occurred, and the millions came with it in the ICL and then the IPL. It is seen as a gold mine but it is too early to say whether the investment can be recouped over the long term .

In fact, with this country about to ramp up Twenty20 and tinker with championship cricket to accommodate it, there is the smallest warning sign of the dangers of overkill, which if my impression is correct already shows that an increase in matches has gone in tandem with an overall decrease in crowds this season. Are people, here anyway - just at the moment it seemed to have captured the imagination of investors - going off the idea a little? Twenty20 has an important role to play but the next couple of years will show if it is a rich vein that has been struck or fool's gold.